


Variations on a theme

by dimircharmer



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Online Dating, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Alternate Universe- Cold War, Alternate Universe- Fantasy, Alternate Universe- First World War, Alternate Universe- Hackers, Alternate Universe- Search and Rescue, Alternate Universe- Various, Alternate Universe- treasure hunters, Alternate Universe: Mad Max, Alternate universe- Arcade, Gen, Retelling: A new AU every scene, alternate universe- office, alternate universe- pirates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-15 11:49:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5784250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimircharmer/pseuds/dimircharmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A retelling of The Force Awakens wherein each scene is a different AU, from high school to hogwarts to historical. </p><p>Loosely follows the plot of the movie, re-interpreting each scene as a different alternate universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. University, Pirates, World War One

                Poe’s staring at what might be the vilest pitch-bin he’s ever seen in his life. It’s mostly shitty kegger beer, sure, but people have been adding to it all night, and he was pretty sure he could smell tequila and some kind of fruity vodka drink wafting from the bucket mixed with standard watered-down brew. About half a bag of chips was floating in the bucket too. Urgh. _Freshmen._

                “So.” He started, looking back up at the guy in the black bedsheet across the table from him. “Who drinks first? Do you drink first?”

                “Why have you come to these hallowed halls?” said black bedsheet.

                “It’s a frat house kegger, I didn’t exactly have to sneak in through the air ducts.” Poe said. “I admit to being a little underdressed, but…” He shrugs as best he can with two people on either side gripping his arms. “I didn’t know there was a toga party on the agenda when I left the house this morning.”

                “Do not joke!” Roared the man in a black bedsheet toga, waving half a smirnof ice in Poe’s face. “We know that you’re one of Dean Organa’s lackeys, sent to shut down our brotherhood!”

                Poe shot him his best ‘are you kidding me’ look.

                “If the Dean wanted to shut you down, don’t you think she could have found someone better than the grad student who works in her office to sneak into your party?”

                The Primi Ordinis frat had actually been on the dean’s shitlist for years, and Organa _hadn’t_ been able to find anyone else on such short notice, and Poe _had_ volunteered to sneak in to try to get the proof they needed to shut them down for good, but that was besides the point. The point was that Poe had hurled his phone, complete with photographic evidence of how the PO Frat treated it’s new initiates as hard as he could out the window before two of the frat brothers had grabbed him. He hoped the phone would be alright, wherever it landed. The information was safe, hopefully, and now all he had to deal with were the self-proclaimed ‘knights of ren’ and the rest of the frat.

                Black bedsheet turned away from him in disgust.            

                “Brethren!” He threw his arms in the air as he said this, and the bedsheet rose up just enough that Poe caught a glimpse of novelty boxers underneath. “We have caught an intruder in our halls, on this, our secret initiation night!”

                Poe caught the eye of one of the more nervous looking initiates and gave him and an exaggerated eye roll. The initiate gave a brief nervous smile, before turning back to black sheets.

                “In punishment for this transgression-“

                “Seriously, it’s a frat kegger, the doors were open” Poe said.

                “The intruder will be part of these celebrations whether he wishes or not!”

                Black sheets held up the disgusting alcohol medley, to a roar of approval from the toga-clad crowd. The nervous one clenched his fingers around his solo cup, and did not cheer. Another of the older frat members, some paper-white redhead wearing dress slacks under his toga, placed a beer bong funnel and tube on the table in front of Poe. The frat brothers on either side shoved him to his knees. In the moment before they shoved the end of the tube in his mouth, Poe caught the eye of the nervous initiate and winked.

                “Cheers.”

*

                Jakku reef was a stretch of almost-islands notable only for the fact that they were so wide and treacherous that one could make a living picking the bones of the ships wrecked there over the past two centuries. Not a good living, perhaps, but a living nonetheless.

                With a rowboat and a decent understanding of the tides and an above average lung capacity, you could find all manner of treasures hidden in the wrecks of galleys sunk just below the surface. Rey had all of these things, and was the most experienced wreck diver on the reef to boot. Today, she was engaged in just that.

She broke the surface of the ocean with a gasp, and shook the water from her eyes. Treading water lightly, she cast about for her little boat, which should have been just about-

                There it was. She set off for it with a front stroke that was as easy as walking, trailing her line behind her as she goes. The other end of the rope is attached to a chest that she had found in the remnants of the captain’s quarters in the wreck of the schooner below. She was optimistic about this one. She hauled herself up on her dinghy and fed her line through a pulley system that was once part of the block-and-tackle for a rumrunner, made to haul barrels up over docks quick and clean as a whistle. It should hold for her purposes another few seasons, and it will certainly hold enough for her to haul today’s bounty into her boat. She finished checking the line, and started hauling.

                A good deal of sweat and toil later, she had one thoroughly rusted, barnacle encrusted chest twice the size of a loaf of bread in her lap. It streamed saltwater as she sat it on the bench, prepared to be opened by the hinges and her chisel. A pair of sharp blows had the rusted iron peeling away from sodden wood like so much rind from a fruit. The lid came off the chest just as easily, and Rey peered inside eagerly to find-

                A sodden ship’s log and a tarnished silver fountain pen. She tossed the box and the book back overboard and held the pen up to the light, twisting it this way and that. Satisfied that it will take a polish well enough to sell, she tucked it in the bucket in the front of the boat before busying herself with the much-patched, salt-stiffened sail. It flapped, gaught the wind and groaned, and Rey settled herself in the back of the boat with the rudder in one hand and the sail’s control line in the other. She had enough tarnished silver and other assorted treasure at home to trade for maybe a week’s provisions in grain and fresh water, maybe enough to get some dried fruit from the mainland.

                Her home, half an old frigate tossed into the reef by a storm, awaited her return. She docked her little dingy in the shadow of the old hull and climbed up the outside like a monkey, finding hand and footholds among the stiff ropes and pitted hull with ease. Tomorrow, she’ll go into Port Nima and talk to the town crier and trade for the next week’s provisions. Tonight, though, she climbs the mast of the old ship and perches in the crow’s nest. There’s an old admiral’s hat there, one she’d found blown in off the sea and not even rotten with wet and heat, and she treasures it. Tomorrow, she’ll go to Port Nima, and it will change her life. Tonight, she pulls the old admiral’s hat over her ears, looks out to sea and dreams of sailing.

*

 Poe is dragged out of the prisoners’ quarters and into the noisy, muddy, frankly _freezing_ world of the enemy camp. He’s somewhere deep behind enemy lines, he feels a surge of satisfaction that their trenches are just as muddy and uncomfortable as the ones he knows two klicks away on the other side of France. The entire camp is dark, not that the added cover seems to be helping this camp any. Shells were falling regularly on their position, or at least near enough to their position that he can feel the impact, see the fire. One of them lands close enough that he can feel the heat of the explosion, even as he turns his face away from the flash to keep his night vision.

                “Turn here.”

                The hand in Poe’s elbow, his escort, drags him around a corner before the ringing in his ears can die down. They must be behind, what, the kitchen? The barracks? They’re around a corner, at any rate, even as the yelling and the fire brigade continue just on the other side of the wall.

                “Listen carefully” The soldier said “if you do exactly as I say, I can get you out of here.”

                Poe blinked at him, and shook his head to clear the ringing in his ears. “What?”

                The soldier hesitated, and then pulled down his standard-issue woolen scarf. Poe’s been firing at the black-and-white striped scarfs since November, and the soldier’s breath is fogs the air without it.

                “This is a rescue,” The soldier asserted. “I’m helping you escape. Can you drive a tank?”

                Christ, the soldier looks young. He didn’t know the army was so desperate they were resorting to cradle robbing, for god’s sake.

                “Are you with us? How’d we manage to get someone behind the lines?” Poe demands.

                “What? Nono, _I’m_ breaking you out!” There’s some yelling from around the corner, and the enemy soldier pressed close up against Poe, shielding him from view for a moment. Poe could feel him shaking.

                “Can you drive a tank?”

                Poe shoved his hands up between them, still bound at the wrists, to keep whoever this is from pressing up against his broken ribs again. “I can drive anything. Why are you doing this?”

                “Because it’s the right thing to do.” The soldier was shaking, trembling in the cold February air, eyes wide and jumpy as a rabbit. Poe would be shocked if he was two months over the mandatory minimum draft age, and he’d bet his last bottle of whiskey that this was the kid’s first time on the front.

                “You’re deserting and you need a ride.”

                “I need a ride.”

                And Poe, he can’t help it, a grin steals across his face. He’s going to steal a tank and drive it across no-man’s-land, with a defector in the gunner seat. He grips the soldier’s arm as reassuringly as he can with his hands still bound.

                “We’re gonna do this.”


	2. Missing Cat, Cold War, Pacific Rim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey rescues a cat, Finn is definitely a member of the FBI, and they both pilot a Jagger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor animal cruelty at the beginning of this chapter, nothing graphic, and the cat's ok.

 

                Rey was digging through the dumpster in the back of the no-frills when she heard the yowl. She pulled herself back out of the dumpster, clutching a tin of pineapple in one fist, to look at the rest of the alley. Two of the neighbourhood kids were huddled around a garbage can, and as Rey watched, one of them kicked it. Another yowl emanated from the mouth of the bin.

                “Hey!” Said Rey. “Leave that poor cat alone!”

                The other kid kicked the can.

                “ _Hey!_ ” Rey ran at them, and the kids backed up slightly. Rey wedged herself between the can and the kids. The cat meowed again, and Rey hushed it absentmindedly.

                “Get out of here,” She told the kids “I mean it. Scram before I decide to call your parents.”

                Rey watched them until they slunk out of the alley, and kept one hand on her pocket knife until they were out of sight. She sighed, and turned to the cat in the can for the first time.

                The orange and white tabby at the bottom of the bucket was so fat it was almost round.

                “Hello” Rey said.

                The cat chirped at her, apparently no worse the wear for having been kicked around be the two kids.   

                “Don’t mind them,” Rey told the cat, as she reached into the garbage can to pull it out. “A couple of punks with nothing better to do, that’s all.”

                The cat headbutted her chin and purred. Rey scratched it under the chin.

                “Who do you belong to, huh?” she crooned “No alley cat’s quite as well fed as you are.”

                Rey fumbled for the tag on the cat’s collar, peering at it carefully.

                “BB-8, huh? Strange name for a cat.” She flipped the tag over in her hand “And no contact information. Of course not.”

                She sighed as she put the cat, BB-8, down again. BB-* purred loudly, and wove between her ankles. “I don’t suppose you can find your own way home?”

                BB-8 head-butted her knees.

                “Of course not. Come on then,” Rey said, picking up her bag and trolley. “You can stay with me tonight, and then I’m taking you to the shelter in the morning. Maybe they know who your family is. They must miss you very much.”

                BB-8 meowed in agreement.

                “One night,” Rey insisted, as she led the cat through the alley to the box she was sleeping in. “That’s it. You go in the morning.”

               

*

                Finn was terrified. He was terrified, and hurt, and wandering through a scrapyard on the bad side of Reno, and he’s pissed off half the criminal families in Nevada as well as probably the FBI and he doesn’t even have the start of a plan. The Federal agent who had just made fast friends with had disappeared in a shootout in the railyard, and now all he has to remember the man who saved his life was a battered fedora with the man’s FBI identification card tucked in the brim. He was wandering aimlessly through a scrapyard, wearing an ill-fitting pair of suspenders and a dead man’s hat when he saw something he never expected.

                The exact carpet bag Poe had told him he was backtracking across Reno to find: a hideous lurid orange and white calico bag the kind that grandmothers everywhere seemed to magnetically attract.  He laughed in relief and took a step towards it, only for it to be yanked out of his reach at the last moment. He blinked up in surprise at the bag thief, a grease monkey about his age in the profession’s ubiquitous coveralls, her hair tucked up in three knobs on the other side of a red bandana. She was brandishing a tire iron aggressively between them, looking straight at him with fire in her eyes.

                “Poe Dameron?” She asked.

                “What?” Finn said.

                “Are you Poe Dameron?”

                “What? No, I’m- Hey woah!” he yelped, ducking out of the way of the tire iron.

                “Then this isn’t your bag!” She said, rearing back for another swing with the iron. “Thief!”

                “Have you been going through it?” Finn had to do an akward little twirl to get away from the tire iron again as she slammed it into where his side had been a moment ago. “There’s important stuff in there! You can’t do that!”

                “You can’t take it either!” She said “It doesn’t belong to you! The tag inside says it belongs to-“

                “Poe Dameron” Finn finished for her.  “I know! I knew him!”

                This, at least, seems to give her pause. She took a wary step back, then another, still holding the tire iron like a champion slugger would hold a bat.

                “Prove it” She said.

                Inspiration struck Finn unexpectedly, and he pulled the identification card out of the brim of his fedora, holding it out to her as a peace offering.

“Here, look-“ he shook it at her until she grabbed it from him, retreating again to examine it.

“Poe Dameron” She read slowly “FBI domestic investigation?”

“That’s Poe’s bag” Finn said. “He was coming back to get it when we got cornered by a bunch of Reds on the other side of the railyard. He- Poe didn’t make it.”

She eyed him wairrily, and hooked the tire iron into one of the loops in her coveralls.

“I’m sorry.” She said, and handed the card back to him. “Was he your partner?”

If you asked him later, Finn wouldn’t be able to tell you for all the money in the world what possessed to respond the way he did.

“Yes. Yes, Poe was my partner. We worked together for the FBI, doing investigator things together. Except when we did them separately.” He cleared his throat. “Yes. Definitely.”

“Are you going to take the bag back to DC with you?” She asked, attempted assault apparently forgotten. “The files said they were urgent.”

“It’s information on soviet spies hiding on American soil.” Finn confessed. “Everyone’s after that information, every gang in the city has been chasing it all day and-“

Gunfire from the outskirts of the scrapyard cut him off, and they both stared at the entrance to the yard with terror.

Finn could hear the cough-sputter of an old diesel engine, and before he think about it any further, he grabbed Rey’s hand and said “Run.”

*

                They fell out of the neural handshake with all the subtlety of a collapsing building. Rey pulled her helmet off, half the old electrodes still stuck in her hair, and laughed and laughed. She shook herself loose from the harness in the Millennium Falcon’s cockpit, and turned to her co-pilot, still in his rig.

                “Did you see, when we-“

                “With the Kaiju Destroyer right in front of us, and the elbow rocket!” Finn finished

                “And then with the” She said

                “Right in the mouth! Never saw us coming!”

                “And the three little TIEs!”

                “All in one shot!”

                Rey laughed, and mimicked the explosion sound with mouth, just as Finn mimed the Kaiju collapsing in the water.

                “That was amazing!” Rey sprawls boneless on the floor as Fin starts to extricate himself from the Jagger cockpit himself. “I was in your head! _You_ were in _my_ head! We fought a category four! We _won!_ ”

                She laughed again, and scratched at her face where the electrodes had left old medical glue drying on her hairline.

                “How did you know we were drift compatible?” She asked Finn.

                “Oh, well, you know I just” Finn tried to step out of the piloting boots and fell flat on his face.

                “Are you okay?” Rey said, scrambling to his side “I should have thought, you must be used to the mark VIs, you aren’t used to semi-attached suspension pods, the Millennium Falcon’s been retired for years, hang on,”

                Rey pulled at the clasps at Finn’s ankles, and wrestled him out of the boots, sprawling them both across the floor of the cockpit.

                “You know,” Finn said. “I’ve been inside your head, but I never actually introduced myself.”

Rey propped herself up on her elbows. “I know your name,” she said.

“I know. I want to do it properly though.” He said, and held out a hand to shake. “Hi, my name’s Finn, and you were just in my head.”

Rey took it in both hands, and shook it, grinning so wide her face hurt. “Rey. Good to meet you.”

Finn’s smile faded suddenly, for no reason Rey could discern.   “Rey, there’s something I need to-“ An alarm went off, blaring noise and flashing lights taking over the cockpit of the old Jagger.

“Hold that thought!” Rey said, already climbing down the ladder into the Millennium Falcon’s Torso “Whatever it is, it can wait until we fix the leak in the nuclear core, grab the toolkit and follow me before we all go up!”

Rey might have been facing imminent radiation poisoning, but as she and Finn worked in tandem repairing the Falcon’s nuclear core, the ghost of the drift causing Finn to hand her the tools she needed before she even opened her mouth, she didn’t think she’d ever been happier. She had a co-pilot.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, if you try to tell me Finn and Rey aren't drift compatible you are wrong wrong wrong.


	3. Indiana Jones, High Fantasy, Bakery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn and Rey try to get a thesis advisor, get taught by a knight from ledgend, and turn down jobs at the local bakery.

*

“Are you sure about this?” Finn asked Rey as she pulled him through the winding maze of the history department’s building. In his hands, he was clutching a very small plastic cylinder, with a nearly priceless slip of papyrus protected inside. “Who’s even qualified to _touch_ something like this?”

“What about Professor Solo?”

 Poe stopped dead in his tracks, not moving until Rey pulled him down the hallway again. “Professor Solo? The intro to archaeology professor?”

“No!” She grinned at him, bright and eager as they come to a stop in front of his door, “The treasure hunter!”

She opened the door without pre-amble, and pushed her way into the cluttered office, strewn with papers, empty coffee cups and chunks of stone.

“Professor-“

Solo didn’t even look up from his desk “Whatever you want me to edit, the answer is _no_.”

“Professor Solo _please_ ,”

“I’m _not_ going to be your thesis advisor, so you can stop asking!”

“It’s not _for_ me!” Rey said, pulling Finn into the professor’s tiny office with her “It’s for him! Finn’s found something in the archives you need to take a look at!”

Professor Solo looked up at her, and articulated the next sentence very carefully. “I’m. Not. Interested. Now go _away_.”

“He’s found a map to Atlantis!” Rey persisted, “An actual map!”

Solo paused for maybe a full thirty seconds before shaking himself and slamming his laptop shut on his desk.

“ _No!_ ” Professor Solo snapped, rising to rest his knuckles on the desk, staring them both down. “I’ve been on enough damn treasure hunts in my life, I’m not taking another!”

“But you’re _Han Solo_ ,” Rey said “You found Amelia Earhart’s plane! The last panels of the Bayeux tapestry! You uncovered four scrolls that survived the burning of the library of Alexandria! You went on three expeditions with Doctor Skywalker, when he was searching for the lost city!”

 “Yeah, I did” Solo said “Luke got closer than anyone else to finding it, and he disappeared in some wreck-ridden stretch of ocean ten years ago. _That’s_ what you get when you go looking for Atlantis.”

“But-“

_"No."_

Something clattered in the hallway. For the first time, to Finn’s eye, Solo seemed to be actually engaged in the conversation, even though his eyes were fixed beyond them at the door to his office.

“Get in the closet.”

Finn darted a glance at Rey to confirm that she was just as confused as he was. Someone shouted down the hall, and all of a sudden professor Solo was around the desk and had hands in the collars of their coats, pushing them into his cabinet, shoving jackets and umbrellas out of the way to make room for them.

“Stay there, and _shut up_.” He hissed, and shut the door with them inside it. The handle of an umbrella was poking Finn in the nose.

No sooner had the door shut than the office door creaked open, and they could hear professor Solo greet a group of men who did not sound happy to see him at all.

Finn looked at Rey, as best he could in the dark, and shrugged. Rey, who didn’t have the self preservation God gave ketchup, pressed her face up against the crack in the door.

“What’s going on?” Finn whispered at her

“I don’t know,” she whispered back, “Someone’s threatening professor Solo, I think.”

“ _What?”_ Finn pressed himself to the slit in the doors just above her. Both of the men he could see from the cabinet crack had pistols stuffed in the back of their pants.

“Shit, Rey” he said “They’ve got guns. This is really, really bad.”

Rey pulled back and stared at him. “The tube around the map,” she whispered “Is it waterproof?”

"What? Yeah, of course, why-“

Rey was already digging in her pocket, and emerged with a lighter.

“Hold still.” She whispered at Finn, and proceeded stick a knee in his shoulder in order to climb on top of him and reach the top of the ceiling. She lit her lighter, and very carefully and held it right next to the fire alarm. For a few heartstopping, poorly balanced moments nothing happened. Then, the alarm blared, and water poured through the automatic sprinkling system. From the next room, they could hear noises of disgust, followed shortly by the unmistakable noise of several people leaving the room in a hurry. Finn, one arm wrapped around Rey’s waist for support, peered up at her through the water.

“Did it work?” he asked.

“I hope so.” She replied.

The door swung open, and a very soggy Han Solo stared at both of them.

“Nice thinking with the alarm.” He told Rey. “Now, what was this about a map?”

*

Han Solo, and Finn should really think of him as Sir Han Solo, came back down the rain-slick stairs of the ruin to check on his horse. Rey was right behind him, tucking her bow and arrow back under her oilskin cloak as she picked her way down the stairs.

“Hey” Han said to his horse, as though it hadn’t tried to break three of Finn’s ribs recently. He pushed some of it’s mane out of its eyes.

“You did great.” He said, and Finn really thinks he needs to emphasize this, _to his horse_. “Just get some rest.”

 Finn sat down heavily at one of the tables in the ruined castle, knocking askew a handful of game pieces. The noise was enough to get Han to look away from the horse and at him, anyway.

“Good job, kid.” He said, passing Finn to get the mouldering mantelpiece. “Thanks.”

Han Solo, Knighted by Princess Organa herself, popped a squat next to the fireplace and began to rummage through the debris searching for firewood.                

“So,” He said, producing a flint and steel from a pouch under his cloak, “fugitives, huh?”

Rey nodded, which was maybe not the best reaction to being accused of having a price on your head by a free-lance, but Finn can’t object before she’s pulling the _very valuable_ and probably literally magic map out from under a pocket in _her_ cloak.

“The Order wants the map.” She said “Finn is with the resistance.”

Finn does his absolute best not to react to her saying this to the most infamous knight of the siege of Stella Mortem castle.            

“I’m…” Rey shrugged. “I’m just a poacher.”

Sir Solo gives them both an unimpressed once-over, before taking the map from Rey. He cleared the table nearest the fire with one sweep of his arm and spread the parchment flat over the pitted surface. Rey peered over his shoulder, excitement clear on her face, as Han unrolled it to reveal-

Nothing.

“Hang on,” Han said “There’s always some trick with these damn- here we go.” He pressed his signet ring into one corner of the map, and all of a sudden the ruined castle storeroom was flooded with light. Finn could hear Rey gasp on his right. It was as though the map was a stained glass window with brilliant sun just on the other side, casting thick coloured light dancing along the walls of the room.

Even as Finn was blinking the spots out of his eyes, the wheeling light and colour coalesced into recognisable shape and form. Instead of an indecipherable whirl of light and colour, the map was now mountain ranges and rivers, picked out in points of light around the room. Dust motes and mist swirled through them, distorting their shapes and making the entire mirage feel as though it could disappear like the morning mist.

Han let out a low whistle, and stepped through a mountain range. “It’s a good trick, but the map’s not complete.”

He waved a hand over the landscape of light. “’S just a piece of a map. No landmarks, no itinerary, nothing that would help us find wherever this is. We can’t find Luke with this. Ever since he disappeared people have been looking for him, and this map ain’t gonna help us be the ones to find him.”

Rey was still staring at the projection in wonder. “Why’d he leave?”

Han scrubbed one hand over his day-old trail beard. “Luke was training the next generation of mages. One of them, an apprentice, turned traitor and slaughtered them all. Luke felt responsible, so he disappeared. If no one knows magic, no one can use it against him, I guess.”

“They were real?” Rey asked, ethereally lit from below by a waterfall “The order of mages, they were real?”

Han sighed. “I used to doubt myself.” He shook his head, peering down at the map where two light-made birds wheeled together by his knees.

“Light, dark, the powers of good and evil holding the realm together. I thought it was all a bunch of mystic mumbo-jumbo.”

He looked back up at them through the field of light, the location of the last mage of the Jedi order hidden somewhere on the floor between them.

“The crazy thing, is” Han said “It’s true. The force, the mages, the order; it’s all true.”

*

“Hey.”

Rey looked up from buttoning her fall coat to see Han offering her a sandwich, wrapped in the shop’s butcher paper.

“Take it” He said.

“I don’t need anyone’s charity.”

He gave her an incredulous look. “You stepped into a bakery you didn’t know, made bread and piecrust for two hours and helped with the lunch rush, scrubbed down all the surface afterwards for seven bucks and hour and you think that a sandwich is charity? Take the damn tuna salad.”

She took the damn tuna salad. Han smiled, and turned back to wiping tables.

“Where’d you learn how to use an industrial dough mixer?”

Rey shrugged. “Here and there.”

“Well, you were doing real well until you nearly slammed the oven door on yourself. You’ve still got a ways to go kid.”          

She offered her apron back and he took it, pausing to peer at the name tag on the breast pocket.

"Hey, Rey.”

 Rey turned back to look at him. Han was turning the apron over in his hands.

“I’ve been thinking, you know, about hiring some part time work. Someone who knows their way around a kitchen, who can pitch in when things get busy out front here.”

Rey’s hand stilled on the doorknob. “Are you offering me a job?”

“It’s not a good job,” He said hurriedly “Minimum wage, up at the asscrack of dawn, wrestling dough and customers all day long-“

“Oh my god,” Rey said “You’re offering me a job.”

Han pointed at her, fist still full of her discarded apron. “I’m _thinking_ about it.”

Her smile stuttered and failed, and she could see the confusion on Han’s face for just a split second before she turned back to the door.

“If you were,” she said, “I’d be flattered, but I can’t, I have to go home, I have to stay there.”

“What, the group home?” Han sat on the back of an old aluminium chair in the bakery, not quite blocking her path out the door. “You’re sixteen at least, aintcha? You can apply for emancipation, if you want, crash on the couch in the staffroom here until you get a place figured out.”

 “No, I-“ Rey took one deep, fortifying breath and turned away for the last time. “I’ve already been away too long.”

Han gave her face one last, long searching stare before he got up the chair in front of the door. “Alright. If you ever change your mind, though” he dug through his pockets and produced a switchblade, a stick of gum and a crumpled business card. The last, he gave to her.

“Give me a call” he said. “The regulars kinda liked you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, maybe not as much 'indiana jones' as 'treasure hunter' but it's still nearly indiana jones. In the last AU, chewbacca is definitely the well fed raccoon in the alley that Han has befriended and is against 4 different FDA codes. Also Nova Mort is literally just 'star death' in latin, because I like to think I'm clever, and it scanned better than MortNova.


	4. 70s arcade, Football and Mad Max

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Han brings Finn and Rey to an old arcade, Kylo Ren talks to a helmet, and Finn is not actually from the green states.

*

Han pulled up to just about the last place Finn would have expected to find help; an arcade at the far end of a strip mall. Han Solo vaulted over the side of his convertible door without even bothering to open it, and turned around just in time to stop his dog from doing the same. Finn looked at Rey across the wide bench of the backseat, and raised an eyebrow. She shrugged, and slid off the back of the car, landing battered converse first in the dusty afternoon parking lot.

“Why are we here again?” She asked, squinting around at the sun blasted parking lot as Finn left the car through the actual _door_.

“I told you” Han said “If there’s anyway that thing’s bugged, one of the chumps in here will be able to clean it up for you.”

Han stared walking through the empty, desolate parking lot to colourfully stuccoed and neon adorned bungalow. The flying saucer shaped billboard out proudly proclaimed it to be Maz’s Castle, letters picked out in neon piping against a painted black night sky. The windows of the arcade itself were plastered in old game posters, most sun bleached blue, keeping any natural light from the building.

“Maz’s been running this arcade since it was just pinball and pong” Han says, “Neither of you kids have the chops to talk shop with her, so shut your yaps and let me do the talking. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t stare.”

Finn shared a split second of nervous eye contact with Rey.       

“At what?”

Han snorted, and shouldered the door open. “Any of it.”

He turned without another word, and all of a sudden they were engulfed in the centre of what Finn could only describe as chaos. The scent of stale corndogs and dried sweat permeated the entire space, and the building was so densely packed it felt like a rave rather than an arcade. A small crowd was crowded around a DDR machine, cheering on a pair of players who were drenched in sweat and glaring fiercely at the glowing arrows on screen in front of them. From every screen and bank, colours whirred, chiptunes blared and quarters rattled.

In the back of the room a tiny woman, her afro more white than black, tied back with a colourful scarf, cupped her hands around her mouth and hollered;

“HAN SOLO!”

The arcade went nearly quiet around her. Somewhere, someone lost their game of pacman and the machine bleeped admonishingly at them.

“Oh boy,” Han sighed. “Hey Maz!” He said with a fake grin “What’s shaking?”

That was, apparently, enough for the arcade to return to normal. Finn contorted himself to avoid bumping into anyone as he picked his way through the narrow corridors of the arcade much more carefully than Han did. Maz, wearing coke bottle glasses, bellbottoms, and coming up to Finn’s armpit puts her hands on her hips and glares at Han.

“Where is my boyfriend?”

Han thumbs over his shoulder “Left the big lug in the thunderbird. Can’t imagine you’d be real keen on letting him slobber all over your hot new get up.”

Maz hmfd at him. “I like that hound.”

She gave them all the hairy eyeball, and then sighed and turned to lead them to a handful of tables in the back by the vending machines and the food kiosk.

“Well, I assume you need something. Desperately. Let’s not split hairs.” She edged herself up into one of the vinyl booths, and regarded them over folded fingers.

“What mess have you gotten these children into this time?”

*

Kylo Ren took a deep breath, and blew it out through his nose.

“Forgive me” He said. “I have questioned my commitment to the team. I feel it again, the temptation to leave it all behind. Coach Snoke can see it. Show me again, the power of fame, of a legacy. I will let nothing stand in my way. I will finish what you started, grandfather. I will make the Skywalker name known nationwide once more. I will finish what you started.”

He rose from the table with his grandfather’s football helmet on it, letting his fingers caress the dent that ended his career, and jammed his own identical helmet on over his head.

He left the changing room to the roar of the stadium outside.

*

Everything about Maz’s watering hole has been circling from surreal to unbelievable and back again. The free use of clean wet in aqueducts and irrigation systems, to the lack of weapon fire, to the lack of hostility from the other lurkers at the bar. Maz was cutting something green on a cutting board, and had given all of them whole glasses(!) of clean wet to drink.

“A map to Skywalker himself?” Maz said, not pausing in mincing what Rey thought was probably a fruit. “You are right back in the grease, Han Solo.”

“No interest in getting back to the green states myself, Maz, I just have to get the sidecar across the flats to Leia.”

Maz waved her knife at Han, and Rey already had her hand on her battle axle, but Han waved her down.

“No, Han.” Maz said. “You’ve been hiding from this fight in the wastes for too long. Go home!” She said something else, in one of those other languages from before the world burned, and Han snorted.         

“She doesn’t want to see me, Maz.”

“Wait,” Rey asked, “What fight?”

“Ah, child” Rey would have bristled, but it was clear Maz was old enough to have lived through the fall of the world. They saw everyone born after it as children forever. “The only fight that matters, freedom against fear. I have seen it rise and fall many times out on this desert, in diesel fumes and dust. Toecutter’s gang, the Sith, today it is Immortan and the First Order. Their shadow looms large across the desert, and even we can ignore it no longer. We must fight.”

Finn lurched from his seat and staggered away from the table.

“There is no fight! Not against the First Order! Not one we can win! They fear no death, they will chase us forever for the chance to bring us to Immortan, I bet their beetlewheels are already after us I-“

Maz was pushing her way across the table to him

“What are you doing,” Finn said.

Maz pulled another layer of glasses on over top of the ones she was wearing. Finn pressed himself into the back of his chair so hard it looked like he was accelerating.

“Solo, what is she doing?”

“I don’t know” Han said “but it can’t be good.”

“When you live as long as I have,” she said, pulling Finn down to her own level “You start to see the same eyes in different faces. And yours are those of a man who wants run.”

Finn shook his head. Also, his hands shook. “You don’t know a drop about me.” He said “Where I’ve been, the ground I’ve covered. The First Order, they’ll take us to pieces for parts. We all need to run.”

Rey looked at him in alarm, even as Maz directed him to some guzzoline haulers in the corner that would Trade work for mileage. Finn bit his lip as he stared at them.

“Finn!” The name tore itself from Rey’s throat almost involuntarily.

He turns to her, and grabs her rough hands in his carefully callused ones. “Come with me.” He said.

“But what about the map!” Rey said “The green states! You have to get back!”

Finn was shaking his head, backing away from her already. “I can’t.” he said.

He offered the prefall shotgun back to Han, who pushed it back into Finn’s jacket. “Keep it, kid.”

Rey turned back to the table, nearly in shock. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Finn talking to the guzzoline haulers, and shaking the hand of one of them. She pushed herself back up from the table and through the crowd to get to him.      

“Finn, what are you _doing?”_

He turnned around to face her, and then back to the haulers behind him. “Don’t leave without me.”

 “Finn!”

“Rey, I’m not who you think I am.”         

Rey shook her head. “What-?”

“I’m not from the green states, okay? I’ve never even seen them, I’m not hauling for them, I’m a _warboy_. It’s the only life I’ve ever known, and the only thing I was ever taught.” He is, she is horrified to see, about to waste water from his eyes. “My first ride out with them, I made a choice. I wasn’t going to kill for them, so I ran.”

Finn laughs, and shook her shoulders slightly. “I ran right into you. And you looked at me like no-one ever had. I was so ashamed and gritty of what I was, but I’m not going back. I’m not going to be bullet feed or parts for the First Order. Rey, come with me, you’re a blackthumb, practically a Regulator already. We can settle and die soft somewhere out by the salts, we don’t have to fight.”

Rey can’t do anything but shake her head, and feel as though she’s got roadrash inside her throat and down to her heart. “Don’t go.”

Finn smiled at her, wet and heartbreaking, and clapped one last hand on her shoulder. “Take care of yourself. Please?”

And then Rey’s first friend turns and walks back out into the endless desert beyond Maz’s doors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suddenly have a lot of feelings about the dumb arcade 70s au. 
> 
> Also, if that last part was incomprehensible to those of you who have not seen Mad Max: a) I'm sorry b) go watch mad max


	5. Hogwarts, Fantasy, Online gaming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey finds an old wand, Hux brings the colonies to heel, and the First Order is definitely doing some weird stuff on the Force Of Fantasy server.

 

Rey probably shouldn’t be in the dungeons. She knows she shouldn’t be down in the bowels of Hogwarts, where hewn stone blocks transitioned into carved-out cave, but the idea of being anywhere someone could find her… No. This was better than the Quidditch pitch, bright and full of sunshine, or the great hall full of chatter, or the common room where someone well-meaning would ask her why she was upset. Better here, where she didn’t have to think about Finn or anything else, where the only person down here was-

Someone was crying.

Rey glanced back up the stairs, the tiny claustrophobic tunnel that led to this section of the basement.

“Hello?” she called.

Whoever was crying sounded very very young, and very very close. They didn’t stop. The only possible source of the noise was behind the rotten wooden door at the end of the hall. Rey pulled her wand from the waistband of her uniform and unlocked the door. She pushed it open, wand lit, to find-

A mouldering old store room. She held her wand higher, casting thin cold light over the rest of the room. She resolutely did not think about how Finn’s lumos cast bright golden light as she squinted in the twilight of her own spell. In the back stood what looked like half an armoire covered in a sheet. On the floor, a heap of spellbooks spilled across the tiles, one of them trembling weakly at the bottom of the pile. A pair of bludgers rolled sluggishly after each other on the floor, enchantments too deteriorated to achieve flight. Rey barely saw any of that, even as one of the bludgers knocked into her ankles. Her entire attention was drawn to a plain card wand box on the other end of the room.

She walked towards it as though it was magnetized, practically without conscious thought. She lifted the top of the box of gently; her fingers left dents in the cover of dust. The wand inside looked… simple. Scuffed near the tip, worn from use on the handle, but still in better condition than her second-hand cherry and dragon heartstring wand. The grip was lightly patterned, with lines stretching the length of the handle. Without hesitating, almost without her noticing, she reached out to touch it.

Her fingers curved around the wooden grip and-

She was running through the corridors of the ministry of magic, and someone was _chasing_ her, a curse whizzed by so close to her arm she could feel it singe the hair and-

She stumbled away from the box, still holding the wand, throwing her hand out beside her to land on the ground behind her and threw her hand in front of her face to-

Protect her eyes from the Feindfire, merlin it’s _everywhere_ , she could hear her students (her students?) screaming somewhere in the distance. The fire was consuming every part of the new school, charred corpses lay scattered on the ground around her as she send off one last owl. Her own students were waiting for her when she turned around, wands out, and Kylo Ren leads them, in his mask with his wand out, having set the fire that will consume them all and-

She is a child, running through the streets of London. The city is being destroyed around her, and no-one else can see the horrible cloaked figures, feeding on the dead and dying, and they said they’d come _back_ for her, she has to stay by the tube station, she ducks into an alley as police exchange fire with a creature out of storybooks and-

She is in the forbidden forest, trees covered in snow and darkness. Even as she panted, trying to catch her breath, someone was shouting indistinctly in the woods ahead of her. Without even thinking about it, she pushed herself to her feet was started running towards them, breath fogging in the air. Just as she was about to reach the clearing- she can practically hear the spellfire- someone lurches out at her behind a tree, wearing a cloak horribly reminiscent of the last dark lord and she falls back onto-

The cold hard floor of the Hogwarts basement. She shoved the wand box away from herself as hard as she could, and buried her face in her hands, heaving deep shuddering breaths.

“Ah.” Said a voice from down the corridor. “I was wondering where you’d gotten to.”

Rey pushed herself to her feet and scrubbed one hand across her face, trying to look presentable. Maz, the diminutive divination professor, peered at her from the end of the hallway.

“I’m sorry-“ Rey started “I shouldn’t have gone in there, I know, what was that?”

Maz pushed gently past her into the store room, and picked up the wand in both hands.

“This,” she said, bouncing it once, “Was once Luke Skywalker’s wand. And his fathers, before his. And now it chooses you!”

“What?” Rey said, “No, it didn’t choose me, it rejected me, I wasn’t even trying I just picked it up I-“

Maz chuckled, rolling the wand between her fingers. “Old wands have minds of their own, child. And this one has certainly chosen you to be it’s witch. I don’t think I’d even be able to cast sparks with it, now that’s it’s chosen you.”

Rey retreated, shaking her head. “It can’t- I can’t- I have to get back.”

Maz sighed, and gently grasped one of Rey’s hands.

“Child,” she said, “I see your eyes. You know what you must do. Whomever you’re waiting for, whomever left you, they are not coming back. This does not mean there are not others who yet might.”

Rey’s eyes, as much as she kept trying to direct them otherwise, returned again and again to the wand in Maz’s hand.

“Luke,” it was barely more than a breath, but Maz nodded approvingly.

“There is magic far greater than what I am capable of, child. Fates that are difficult even for seers to discern. But even I know that your destiny lies ahead of you, not behind. There is powerful magic at works here and _you_ , you are at it’s centre.”

Maz closed her eyes and hummed softly, still holding onto one of Rey’s hands.

“Feel it,” she said “Feel it flow through you. That magic has always been there, surrounding you and every other living thing. The wand has simply awakened it. It has always been there. It will guide you.”

She opened her eyes again, and gently curled Rey’s fingers around the wand.

“Take it.” She implored, eyes bug huge and magnified behind their glasses.

Rey took a step back, and dropped the wand on the floor with a clatter.

“I’m not- I’m not touching that thing again. I don’t want any part of this.”

She turned and fled back up the stairs, leaving the ancient, malevolent wand between them on the floor.

*

It would have been difficult for Hux to imagine a more perfect day for it. The sky was clear, sun bright enough to burn of the early morning mist by noon. If one were to use a spyglass from the top of the battlements, one could see clear across the water to the insurgent colonies. He turned away from the sentries who were doing just that and back to the assembled ranks of men in front of him. At his side, his most loyal captain dressed in glittering, perfect steel. In front of him, assembled ranks of his own army, filling the entire courtyard and spilling down the ordered, gridded streets. He permits himself one private smile at the uniform ranks of the army in front of him, larger than any previously assembled, all dressed impeccably in his own colours.

He clasped his hands behind his back as he turned to address them.

“Today!” His voice snapped through the tropical air like a whip crack “Is the end of the Republic! This is the end of a regime that has turned away from order, and the benevolence of good government! At this _very moment_ , they spread lies and slander, purporting to support freedom while providing the insurgent, anarchist resistance with guns and ships! This machine, this manifestation of God’s will on which you stand, which we have toiled over with our own to hands, will put an end to their treachery! We will bring an end to their cherished democracy, to their beloved independence, to their prized fleet. We shall bring them to heel before our glorious Empire once more! Never again shall any dare to question our sovereignty over all the land and seas! Centuries from now, they will remember this day, as the last day of the Republic!”

At this very moment, he knew, in the bowels of the volcanic island hundreds were working in tandem to build pressure in the candelabra, to master the very forces of nature as none had before. From on the mountainside, he saw the signal flare glow brightly for just a moment. This was it, the defining moment of the First Order in this age

He directed his gaze back at the crowd and yelled, with all his force,

“FIRE!”

The ground itself shook beneath their feet. The rumble started deep below the earth and grew into an almighty roar, an unholy sound. The ground lurched- no. The island itself moved, the first order, he thought giddily, had dominion over the land itself. Something deep below the earth cracked, and the volcano spewed red death into the clear afternoon air. Hux Hux turned to look the same direction as his soldiers were looking just in time to see the wall of water rising from the ocean, surging towards the islands who dared declare themselves independent. Within the day, every structure, every plant, every man woman and child on those islands would be scrubbed from existence, the land itself as clean as a baptized infant and ready for the First Order to colonize again.

Hux screamed in triumph and thrust his fist in the air with the rest of his men, a sea of hands outlined against the red-tinted sun. 

*

Finn had barely reached the fast-travel marker when player death notifications started popping up. The universal chat in the bottom left of the screen, usually filled with offers for trade and guild notices, was swamped under a sea of red text.

“What the hell,” he muttered to himself. He quickly tabbed away to re-open skype, and called the old gamer who’d been showing him the ropes.

NerfHerder picked up the call before the first dial tone had finished ringing through.

“You’re seeing this too, right?” Finn asked, not bothering with a greeting.

“You betcha, kid.” Came the reply through Finn’s headphones. “You’re former guild’s finally made a move on neutral territory.”

Finn’s eye’s skittered across the death notices, scarcely comprehending. He recognized one of the usernames before the other notices pushed it offscreen, and he could feel his eyes widen.

“Did they attack the entire Hosnian region?” Finn asked in alarm “They’ve been neutral territory since Beta!”

“And now they’re part of the battlefield” NerfHerder (Finn should probably get his real name at some point) replied grimly. Finn ran back across the market square to the outside of the tavern where NerfHerder and his familiar popped back into existence. Finn zoomed out and saw a swarm of first order guild members appearing by the fast travel port on the mini map.

He swore. “We have to get out of here, where’s Rey?”

“I dunno.”

Finn stared at NerfHerder’s avatar onscreen, forgetting to complain about being pushed around by his ever-present mount.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“What I said” NerfHerder jumped for emphasis. “When you left, she hung up the call and ran from the tavern. Technically, me and her are still in the same party, so I would have seen if she’d logged out and she hasn’t had enough time to get to a warp point, so she’s still in Takodana somewhere.”

Just off-screen, a series of spells landed one after another after another, leaving a lurid pink radius of negative effects behind in their wake.

“How do we know she’s not dead yet?” Finn asked.

“Same party, remember kid?” Came the reply through his headphones. “I have an eye on her stats, she’s still full health.”

A member of the First Order rounded the corner of the square, and NerfHerder and his mount unleashed a flurry of ranged attacks, turning the black and white armoured warrior into a pile of viscera and experience points before they even had a chance to finish laying down buffs.

Something else occurred to Finn.

“I sold my bow! I don’t have a weapon!”

“What? Why on earth-? Doesn’t matter, uh-“ NerfHerder lay down a series of party wide buffs, covering himself and Finn and his mount. “Didn’t you get that legendary sword from the NPC in the castle? Use that.”

Finn scrolled through his inventory and dutifully equipped the glowing blue sword.

“I’m not a melee warrior!” he said “I’m not spec’d into swords!”

“Ah, that should be fine, these legendary weapons work with any class.” NerfHerder said. “Besides, I’m optimized to work with at least one tank anyway.”

A group of First Order members charged around the corner. One of them, clearly upon seeing Finn, took the time to switch to two-handed weapon output and open a private chat with Finn. Finn opened it.

**NinetiesKid[FirstOrder]: Traitor!!!!!!**

“Uh oh.” Finn said

“What?” NerfHerder asked, but all of Finn’s attention was suddenly occupied with trying to stave off someone who not only had the perks that equipping a legendary sword granted, but also hundreds of hours of experience actually playing a melee character. Finn landed what he thought were a couple of respectable hits, but was mostly trying to protect his negligible rogue health from the unexpected barrage. Did the mace have an electricity rune on it? Jeez, no _wonder_ people stuck with the first order if that’s the kind of gear they got in the upper levels.

 Just as Finn was about to write this life off, NerfHerder’s mount lunged at NintiesKid and stunned him, allowing NerfHerder himself to finish him off with a single shot.

“Hey, SuperTrooper” came the voice from Finn’s headphones. “You alight?”

Finn downed a health potion, and watched his health bar tick steadily back into the green. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Good.” He replied grimly. “Because we’re surrounded.”

Finn scrolled out and saw that the entire outlying district of the town had been overrun by First Order guild members.

“Fuck” Finn said, and dragged the map around in search of some way out. “We might be able to make it through the woods? Or- Hang on, what’s that coming over the lake?”

“Cover me, I’ll take a look.”

Finn dutifully took care of a pair of low level First Order members while his party member was occupied with the map.

“So, SuperTrooper, I have good news and bad news.”

“Yeah?” Finn said.

“Good news, is that those ships coming in off the lake is the Resistance guild, and they’re here to help us mop up the rest of these First Order jokers.” On screen, a barrage of arrows and magic effects took out a whole block of first order warriors. Finn whopped in triumph.

“The bad news,” NerfHerder continued, recovering health on screen “is that I took a look at ReyOfSunshine’s stats on the way by and she’s paralyzed.”

Finn blinked. “Paralyzed? That’s a mage effect, right?”

“Yeah. And the only mage I know of that comes along on first order raids with any regularity is-“

“KyloRen.” Finn said, dread creeping up his spine. “But why not just kill her? Why-?”

He was interrupted by Skype chirping at him. ReyOfSunshine was trying to call him.

“I’m going to plug her into the group call” He told NerfHerder, already doing it.

“Guys?” Rey’s voice crackled across her connection. “I’m pretty sure I’m being kidnapped.”

“How in the hell-“

“I’m paralyzed and they’re pushing me towards a boat. I can’t even log out because I’m technically still in combat.”

“What?” Finn said “Why? Which dock, I’ll come rescue you.”

“It’s too late.” Rey said. “I’m on the boat now.

NerfHerder swore, even as he went to help out the main body of Resistance warriors.

“Rey.” Finn promised over her dodgy skype connection “Rey, I promise you I’ll get you out of there”

 “Yeah,” Even across Rey’s frankly terrible microphone and Skype’s always terrible connection it was impossible to miss the doubt in her voice. “Ok Finn.”

“Even" He swore, trying to transmit sincerity across three states and knowing each other only through usernames. "if I have to storm the First Order stronghold myself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all I am so sorry about the two weeks without an update, midterm season kicked my ass all over the place. I know that Saturdays are an AO3 dead zone (tm) but I'm giving this one to you anyway. You deserve it.
> 
> Chapter notes!  
> -Hogwarts stuff left deliberately vague so the amount of universe-to-universe fusion left up to the reader  
> -The First Order, Hux's speech thing is sort loosely historic age-of-sails era, but really fantasy heavy, obviously. I was toying with making it a speech during, I don;t know, the crusades or something, but I like the idea of them hollowing out a volcano to use as a superweapon. Also, volcanic eruptions can and do tint sunlight red. Now you know.  
> -I apologise thoroughly to anyone who actually plays MMORPGs, because I did approximately no research for this chapter. There's good evidence to suggest that TR-8R's actual nickname was 'Nines', so therefore 'NintiesKid'. Han is a ranger, Finn is a rouge, probably. Rey is... An alchamist? A monk? idk.


	6. Office work, Search and Rescue, Hackers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maz's office is destroyed, a forest fire threatens D'qar, and Kylo Ren is in Rey's computer.

 

Maz’s office was a ruin. Cubicle walls and filing cabinets lay heaped on the floor, and files and paperwork covered every surface like a fine coating of dust. Someone was crying, muffled sobs loud in the otherwise shell-shocked office. The new intern, Finn, had taken a heavy seat on an upturned desk and had tuned out everyone and everything that wasn’t his phone frantically making call after call to Rey’s cellphone. She had been grabbed in the raid and frogmarched out of the office by armed guards. She had tried to twist free every step away from the office.

Whatever lockup she’s in now, whatever questioning she’s receiving, they clearly haven’t given her back her phone.

Han kicked a pile of files in frustration which achieved very little but a small paperwork avalanche. On the other side of the office, the elevator announced that it was heading towards their floor. He rose to meet it as the door dinged politely at the wrecked office.

The doors slid open, and inside surveying the damage with her hands on her hips was-

“Goodness!” Leia, and her _irritating goddamn personal assistant_. “Han Solo! It is I! Cecil! You probably didn’t recognize me because of the red hair!”

Cecil fussed a stuffed folder into one arm and ran a hand through his bright red hair, as though anyone could forget his squawking voice of penchant for banana-yellow suits. He grinned cheerfully at Han, and turned back to his employer.

“Did you see who it was?” He said excitedly to Leia “Did you see- oh. Uh-“

Cecil’s flopping pointing finger wilted under the force of Leia’s raised eyebrows. His hand retracted back behind the safety of his file folder. His eyes darted nervously between the two of them.

“I’ll just…” He jabbed one thumb over his shoulder, and crabwalked sideways from the elevator. Even as he went, Han could hear him gossiping to one of Leia’s other aides. Leia, as prim and elegantly blowdried as he had ever seen her, was concealing a smile only through years of experience.

“You changed your hair.” Han said, for lack of anything better to say.

Her lips quirked. “Same Suit.” She replied.

“No,” He smoothed his hands down the extra-wide lapels of the same too-big suit he’d worn to work since 1978. “Different suit.”

Han nearly grinned for a split second, so easy to fall back into old habits with her, so easy to slip back into domesticity and family with the one woman he ever thought he’d ever settle down with.

His grin curdled before it even had time to fully form, as he remembered the product of that union.

“Leia, he was here today.” He stepped forward toward her, and his feet shuffled through the paper on the floor like leaves on a forest floor “I saw him. Our son.”

She stepped forward through the debris on the office and gripped his forearm. Her eyes glittered in the florescent lights, full of emotion and still somehow maintaining her perfect vision even when Han was squinting at menus and street signs. She rubbed his arm, and tugged him gently towards the elevator. He folded her beautifully tailored shoulders under his scruffy home-patched arm, and they left the building together.

*

When Finn’s bus arrived down off the mountain, he disembarked to an emergency relief centre that was already full to bursting. He shifted the toddler on his hip a little higher and stared around at the absolute chaos. Even inside the building (the highschool gymnasium, Finn assumed) the scent of smoke clung to his hands, his jacket, his hair and everyone was sooty and shell-shocked. They had passed three smaller towns on the way to D’Qar, all of which had been evacuated in the threat of the encroaching forest fire. Finn tried not to wonder how many of them were already up in flames.

Groups of people milled around in various states of shock, calling out for friends or family and mostly not finding them. Paramedics were pulling people off busses and straight into ambulances. Some of the citizens of D’Qar were giving out bottled water and sandwiches to the evacuees, or alternately were helping set up cots against the walls of the gym. The bleachers seem to have been adopted and transformed into inventory sorting, water and shock blankets and sleeping bags spilling over the seats. One volunteer was helping unload another truck full of supplies, and Finn had to squint because surely his eyes were deceiving him, that couldn’t be-

“Dad!” cried Bea from his arms.

Before Finn could react, Bea had twisted her way out of his arms and war running across the gymnasium, pushing people out of her way as she went. Finn lunged after her, practically sprinting through the crowd. He emerged on the other side of a knot of people just in time to see Poe Dameron swing her up in the air.

“Baby girl!” Poe buried his nose in her hair, arms wrapped tight around Bea’s shoulders. The orange rescue blanket that Bea had been wearing slipped down off her shoulders, revealing the sooty white dress underneath. Bea clapped her little hands to Poe’s face, and Poe laughed in utter relief.

“Dad, you’ll never guess what happened!”

Poe pulled back, so he could look her in the face. “What happened, baby girl?”

Bea planted one hand on his jaw and _pushed_ , forcing Poe to look in Finn’s direction.

“Look who rescued me!”

Poe seemed to forget all about the tiny hand pressing into his face as he met Finn’s gaze across the room. Finn couldn’t quite believe it either.

“Poe?” Finn had to know, he had to be sure. “Poe Dameron?”

“Buddy!” and then Poe was moving again, making his way to Finn at the same time Finn was pushing his way to Poe, and Poe put Bea down at just the last moment for them to be able to hug each other properly. Poe’s hair was still caked with blood, but he’d gotten stitches and he was up and moving, which is more than Finn expected when he had seen the wreckage of Poe’s chopper on the mountainside.

“You’re alive!” Finn was still gripping the sides of Poe’s shirt, probably stretching out the fabric, but he really didn’t care at the moment.

“So are you!” Poe’s joy was infectious, even in a disaster zone Finn could feel himself starting to smile

“What happened?” Finn asked

“Got thrown from the crash,” Poe said “made my own way down the mountain when I couldn’t find you; no you, no chopper, no wreck and with the fire growing I assumed-“

Bea tugged at Poe’s pant leg.

“And Bea says you saved her. That you found her and brought her down off the mountain”

“I-“ Finn was going to protest, he wouldn’t have had a shot in hell without Rey, but Poe steamrollered over him, shaking him slightly by the lapels of his jacket.

“Finn, you found my daughter, you saved her _life_ you-“ He stopped abruptly “-are wearing my jacket.”

“Oh.” Fin said, and then started to take it off. It was Poe’s rescue jacket after all, even if it had kept Finn alive the last few days, gifting him the authority of an actual search and rescue ranger.

“Nonono!” Poe pulled the collar of the jacket back up and smoothed out the sleeves, rubbing his thumbs across Finn’s collar bones.

“Keep it.” He said. “It suits you. You’re a good man, Finn.” Bea nodded from somewhere around Poe’s navel.

Finn can feel his grin flicker and fade, and he looks at the family he’s just reunited, and knows he’s about to do the unthinkable.

“Poe. I need your help. You’re the best search-and-rescue pilot in the state, and my friend’s still up the mountain somewhere. She saved my life I can’t-“

Poe’s already nodding. “Let me find a chopper. We’ll get her down.”

*

Rey is stuck in her hardware van and can’t fucking _get out_. Her whole hacker rig is set up here, all the surveillance equipment she’s managed to piece together after doing years of odd jobs of dubious legality, patched with off-model parts and duct tape, but it’s _her_ goddamn rig, and it’s in _her_ goddamn van. And now she’s stuck in the van, with no contact to her team and no-way out, and a very limited amount of time before the First Order moves in on her location; parked in a warehouse on the outskirts of town.

The city’s crawling with police, and First Order mobsters and if the Resistance ever had a presence in the city, they have since been beaten back by the series of explosions early that same day, the ones that leveled several apartment buildings and the Resistance’s main office headquarters. If they were ever a chance for her (And Finn wasn’t even really part of them, she reminds herself) they aren’t anymore. Han Solo and his car are who-knows-where, and Finn had fled the city after warning them of the First Order’s plans, and anyone else who might miss her has left her behind decades earlier.

She, and her rig, are truly alone.

She scrubbed her hands through her over her face and through her hair, and tried to think.

This is the moment that her computer started to boot up by itself. She yanked the orange and white data drive from the USB slot just as the image on screen transformed from her screensaver into a single menacing black mask.

From her speakers, the sound of heavy breathing.

Rey slipped the data drive up one sleeve, carefully out of view of her webcam.

“Who are you?” she asked the screen.

“I think you know that answer to that question.” Kylo Ren replied.

“And the others?”

The mask on screen tilted slightly, and Rey realized with alarm that it was a live video feed and not, as she had previously assumed, simply an animated graphic.

“The treacherous, thieving, anarchist, cohort you call your friends, you mean?”

Rey breathed very carefully through her nose, trying to keep her pulse even and nodded.

“You will be relieved to hear I have no idea.”

Rey blew out one long breath, and started to fumble under the desk for the manual plug for the computer.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” The voice said. Rey ignored him, and grabbed the wire from under the towers.

“I did warn you.” Kylo Ren said, and a great jolt of electricity surged through Rey’s arms, causing her to cry out in shock and drop the wires. She released them with a cry and threw herself back against the opposite wall of the van, clutching her burnt hands close to her chest. Her fingertips were singed, three of them already starting to blister. She blew on them gently, and glared at the computer.

“You still want to kill me?” The voice asked.

“That’s what happens when you’re being hunted by a coward behind a _mask_.” Rey spat.

There was a beat of silence where all Rey could hear was the whirr of her poor overworked cooling fans. Then, to her surprise, a pair of hands joined the mask on screen and pulled the mask away from his face. The boy underneath was only maybe a handful of years older than she is. He looks nothing like the kind of person Rey had imagined would ally themselves with people who would destroy apartment blocks for a political agenda.

“Tell me about the data.” He said.

“It’s on an orange and white portable hard drive” She said “Four terabytes, USB powered, compatible with windows and mac and Linux-“

“Do _not_ ” he said “Play games with me. I know what’s on that drive. I know you’ve seen it. I know you probably accessed its information on this very rig.”

He smiles at that. “Shall I take a look around? See what else is in here?”

“Fuck” Rey whispers to herself, and scrambles to her keyboard even as files start opening and closing themselves on her own screen.

“No personal effects whatsoever,” He said, “Were you so alone, so lonely that you have nothing of your own to show for it? So afraid of leaving that you have remained even though there is nothing for you here? And what’s this?”

Her prescription for sleeping pills popped up on the screen. “Having trouble sleeping? All alone, in the city”

Rey closed the window nearly as soon as it popped up, but even as soon as she had closed it he had pulled up the background noise generator she used to put herself to sleep.

“And look at this,” he continued, “Dreaming of the sea? Trying to? Little girl who’s never been out of the city in the desert?”

The sound started even as the window vanished, filling the van with crashing waves and the sound of gulls calling. Rey swore, and tried to pull up the window again to shut it properly.

“And Han Solo.” Onscreen, a photo Finn had taken of them in a diner appeared, along with the back of her driver’s licence listing him as her emergency contact.

“Like the father you never had,” Kylo Ren continued “He would have disappointed you, you know.”

“Get _out_ ” she said, teeth gritted and frantically trying to regain control of her rig “of my _computer_ ”

“I know the data is on here somewhere.” He said, “I’ll find it one way or another. You could just give it to me. Make this easier on all of us.”

On the screen, the picture has shifted to one of the open road; it’s a picture Han had showed her from his glory days. It’s just empty road into the distance, with the setting sun bathing the whole scene in thick golden light. The seaside noise generator is still competing with the coolant fans for the loudest noise in the room.

“I,” Rey said, suddenly full of resolve. “Am not giving you _anything_.”

“We’ll see,” Kylo Ren said, but Rey’s already tracing his presence in her computer, using the same backdoor he used to access her rig to get into the backdoor of his own. With a few quick keystrokes, she destroys the fake computer-generated background behind Kylo Ren’s onscreen presence and is presented with a view of his actual room.

She grins in hard-won triumph as she takes note of his room, almost absentmindedly going through his photo albums, noting which ones have been opened most recently, which have been used as screensavers and lockscreens, which have barely been touched.

“You’re afraid.” She said, putting an image of his grandfather on the screen, “That you’ll never be as skilled as Vader.”

He looked at her in shock, and almost before she could react, he had risen and slammed his laptop shut, leaving Rey alone again in her van. She slumped back against the opposite wall of the van, blew on her burnt fingers, and listened to the sound of seagulls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm playing fast and loose with timelines here, because I didn't want to write three scenes about the resistance in D'Qar in a row. 
> 
> The first one I wrote mostly because the idea of C3PO as least stylish office assistant to ever grace the working world is hilarious to me, lets be honest here.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow this is super fun to write. Looking to update this about twice a week, with 3-4 scenes each update. If you have one you really want to see, let me know and we'll see if we can make it happen. 
> 
> This fic is going to be tracing the narrative line of TFA fairly closely, just telling each scene in a different AU. If you want to pick up any of these AUs and run with them, be my guest! They're all yours.


End file.
